Television Culture

A number of creative ideas regarding television's role in American society are overinvested here with a ""scholarly'' vocabulary and, therefore, rendered obscure. In theoretical and practical discussions, however, Fiske, a visiting communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, convincingly challenges multiple assumptions: television, he says, is not a ``closed text''a self-contained entity with a single meaning; news, he reminds us, ``is also a commodity,'' one that reinforces a primarily masculine culture; and, while soap operas seem to enforce a traditional patriarchal value system, for many fans the genre often ``whittles away at patriarchy's power to subject women.'' Indeed, Fiske's synthesis of different mediascripts, camera work, lighting, villains and heroesis admirable. But, ultimately, his Marxist political agenda and heavy-handed style detract from the book. His assertion, for example, that ``excessive bureaucracy is a common sign, in capitalist popular culture, of Communism''he cites M.A.S.H. and James Bond as evidencehardly resonates. (April)